The Trailokya Trilogy Companion is a continuing online manuscript that illustrates and explains some of the details of the story, helping readers to keep things straight while they travel through the series. Readers can view this live companion book on Wattpad (either using the website or an app for their phone) absolutely free.

The companion is organized in alphabetical sections for convenience. In each section, the entries are organized like a dictionary along with original artwork and excerpts from the Trailokya Friday blog posts. In the coming weeks and months the blog will feature specific entries, to give you a taste of what is available in the companion.

A seeing device. There are only three in existence and all are located in Zion, one each for the past, present, and future.

The kapalanum are one of my favorite pieces of technology in the series. The word was constructed using the Sanskrit word kapal, meaning forehead, or top of head. Kapals are a Buddhist/Tibetan religious implement traditionally constructed from the top of a human skull. The bowls were decorated lavishly. In Hindu tradition, some deities use the bowl to drink blood. The rituals surrounding the use of the kapal were to reach higher tantric meditation and usually included imbibing things that would assist in this level of consciousness. In Tibet, they were placed on altars containing offerings, which could be blood, to the gods.

The point of using this particular religious icon, was not only to tie in more with the use of Sanskrit, but to show something that was used in a similar manner to, albeit by different means, tie in the broken memories theme that runs throughout Trailokya. Instead of a human skull, the kapalanum is shaped more like a Grecian urn. Instead of blood, it contains a plasma in which tiny atman are suspended. Their location in Zion is to protect them from those who would abuse the power they possess. Each is housed in the most logical of places: the past is in the library of Akash; the present is at the heights of Otzar and the gates to Samsara; the future is at the top of Mount Zion inside the King’s chambers.

Each kapalanum does exactly what it says. The Akash kapalanum makes use of the documents in the library as well as the impressive connection between the three. The plasma within glows a pale yellow, harkening the lower chakras and the gilded memories of the past. No, they can’t be hacked to make one do what a different one does or cross wires to make it think it’s showing you the past when it’s the future, etc. Still, they’re a very powerful piece of machinery, and they’d be dangerous in the hands of the wrong individual. I bet Belial would love to get his hands on them, and maybe that is why he’s so bent on getting into Zion again?

The Otzar kapalanum requires a piece of the subject to be dropped into it’s plasma in order to interface with specific individuals. So, if you wanted to see the moon, you’d need a bit of moon rock and so on. The craziest part is, that it views from the exact location you find the donor of material. The glow of the plasma here is teal, combining the tones of the midsection chakras and throat.

The King’s kapalanum is the most mysterious of the three. It has never been seen, so it’s existence is more of a rumor than a truth, but as all things come in three, it’s a safe bet it does actually exist. This kapalanum is supposedly how the High Council manage their meddling in the lives of souls and duta, and many plans likely have been forged around their findings in the vessel. The glow from this particular well is violet. Such a glow has been seen coming from the king’s private chambers beyond the council chamber where he sits court.

Is there something special the three can do together? As of yet, the three do not do more than have a theorized link between them. They sound like more of a scrying tool than an actual window into true events, though, at least the third one. However, in order to determine the future, one must understand the past and present.

In the last installment of The Art of Trailokya, I spoke about having a limited budget with which to work. If you have the wherewithal, you’ll eventually find tools to get around your financial limitations. Recent months introduced me to an app that allows me to take still photos and animate them. It’s actually a pretty interesting concept. One might think, why not just use film clips, but the still form adds something to the art. Film is busy with motion, while still photos that have been animated have more focused points. It forces the eye to focus on just the thing, as if a snip of a moment.

If you scroll down the page, on the right hand side you’ll find a few animations I have created for my books. I have several more on my Instagram account, but not everything is focused on Trailokya. Below, you’ll find a gallery of the work I’ve done to promote the trilogy. In addition, follow this link to a video highlighting my work from this past summer.

The Trailokya Trilogy Companion is a continuing online manuscript that illustrates and explains some of the details of the story, helping readers to keep things straight while they travel through the series. Readers can view this live companion book on Wattpad (either using the website or an app for their phone) absolutely free.

The companion is organized in alphabetical sections for convenience. In each section, the entries are organized like a dictionary along with original artwork and excerpts from the Trailokya Friday blog posts. In the coming weeks and months the blog will feature specific entries, to give you a taste of what is available in the companion.

muse.

Duta charged with inspiration of other beings. A trademark of this kind of duta is gender indeterminate sattva, or shape-shifting.

Readers will encounter the muses of Trailokya throughout the series. In fact, our lead is part muse. But what does it mean? In classical literature and mythology, muses were lesser gods who inspired mankind, for better or for worse. You’ll hear artists (writers included) speaking about how their muse isn’t talking to them, and they’re finding it hard to create. This aspect does exist within the parameters of the beings that make up this class in the trilogy.

Muses are a class, or ethnicity, of duta. They’re known for their shape-shifting, which you will witness Maiel and her twin brother, Joel, do. Because they are only ethnically part muse, they can only change into one shape. Their powers in this area are simply not strong enough to achieve anything else. What that shape is is determined by something in the atman, which is not entirely understood. Likely, it has something to do with the duta’s psychology. The twins, for instance, are warriors, and would likely find comfort in becoming powerful lions. The added fact of their change coming about when they’re upset adds to this theory.

Muses exist in each race of duta, making it both a class and an ethnicity. Their talents are of great use to the atman that enter Otzar from the perpetual light. Not all muses are made to work in this way. As mentioned above, artists have claimed to know their presence for centuries. This pits them against dark forces who seek to inspire negative actions from the souls. Thus, the position of inspiring-angel can be quite dangerous. In this capacity, they are support staff for guardians, coming and going as needed.

Although Maiel and her brother are not strong shifters, the muse portion of their background lends them an added strength in their position as leaders in their Legion. It gives them the ability to inspire their soldiers and those they guard. Likely this also influences their success against danava. Unfortunately, in the case of Maiel, it has clearly made one of the fallen besotted.

Muses on the ethnic end of matters rise from duta to svarg, then from virtue to cherubim. Certainly there have been those who have defied this trajectory. It has had no detrimental effect upon their ascension. Those tracked in non-linear risings have been found to generally become a being of mixed ethnic background. Muses are more likely than any other group to defy linear risings. Their curious nature lends itself to such fluidity.

The muses enjoy many genders, like the rest of their brethren. Usually they are gender fluid, especially in later risings where gender becomes irrelevant. Dominic’s fear that his wife may choose life as a virtue when she rises to that point, is indicative of his desire to dominate her based on his primitive understanding of gender. It is mentioned in the narrative that they have incarnated as different genders, and dabbled in some fluidity in privacy, but it is under the parameters of a dubious sexual interaction.

Because muses could be anything at any time, they are often much slower in rising. They’re thorough in their exploration of being, driven by an innate curiosity. This is not a flaw. The atman drawn to this state of being are predisposed to being methodical. Very few muses became fallen.

Learn more about muses in The Trailokya Trilogy…

Click here to learn more about The Trailokya Trilogy, and let me know what questions you have in the comments. If you loved this article, subscribe to the blog to get more.Donate by buying a book.

Talking to readers about my series, The Trailokya Trilogy, I find that certain questions about the text continue to arise. One subject, which I personally get hung up on, is the fear that would-be readers walk away from the series fearing it’s a Christian book before taking the time to even read a chapter. I’ll assure you, and thus myself, by saying, it is no more a Christian book than The Exorcist (1973) is a Christian movie/book. Certainly, there are elements of both works that utilize Christianity to weave the tale. The Exorcist is also a dark paranormal story, classed in horror. Trailokya shares this in common with Blatty’s story, too.

The theological is a pretty common area with which to explore the paranormal. Paranormal activity, research, and also the genre of literature doesn’t need to be seated in any theology, however. I know that many like to think of hauntings as demonic, sometimes ancestral, environmental, and so on, but their thoughts all come back to the spiritual. This link ties into science fiction, as well. Research would require data, method, and tools of science.

Trailokya poses the question: what if it were real, measurable? It does not state that religion is truth. In fact, the narrative unflinchingly challenges dogma. Should anything paranormal be deemed legitimate, it would not require religion or necessarily prove religion correct. The truth is, religion was created to explain the unexplainable. I personally believe that is why deeply religious groups reject science and education. Those things have done more for explaining our world than any theology and superstition.

The narrative blends elements of our world, including cultures and faiths, proposing that all that we have created here is a reflection of the place from which we really come. This borrows from historical theories on reality as an illusion, one of the more recent hypotheses belonging to Nick Bostrom (disproven).

Trailokyans dwell on another plane, but transition between the main three via bio-interfaces (bodies) in the case of Samsara and plane access gates without those interfaces. For those familiar with some paranormal theories, this might conjure thoughts of possession or the lesser known walk-in.

The beings populating the trilogy are drawn from research on alien species in addition to the theological. There are reams of internet pages dedicated to cataloging and discussing alien encounters. It’s a trip to read them and even more so when using them as research and framework for a fiction. Once again, What if it were real, measurable?

The power of Trailokya is in using established legends and culture, while pinging human doubt. What if? It’s a frightening concept, isn’t it? What if demons and angels and aliens and other worlds and all the bad and good were real? Imagine it. Well, you don’t have to. It’s in The Trailokya Trilogy.

The horror, the darkness of Trailokya is in confirming human desire and fears at one. It creates a surrealness in which the reader is suspended, waiting for it to turn on them or offer them everything for which they’ve been wishing.

Obviously, the darkness comes in on the heels of the shadowalkers, too. Classic monsters of horror, Demons provide a frightening proposition to most. When doing my research on them, even I stopped to wonder if I should take some precautions. Well, if they weren’t screwing up my day already, they never were going to. But, what if they are there on the fringes chipping away at our sanity and our souls? What if the stupid things we do, or those seeming accidents we have aren’t whims or mistakes?

In the first installment of the story, the narrative walks the reader through a children’s hospital. There are vignettes in which demons and angels (called danava and duta in the books) battle over humans, some with sword, others with manipulation. Demons inspire the humans to make bad choices, spiraling them right into their dark prison, the burning down. There seems to be little space safe from them. Even in the hallowed halls of Zion, there are those touched by the dark. And, they can affect those who are pure, igniting a flame inside of them, if those innocents are not careful.

Those are just the obvious ways in which Trailokya is a dark paranormal fantasy. Numerous details support and deepen that darkness. Switch on a light tonigt, and enjoy reading The Trailokya Trilogy.

Click here to learn more about The Trailokya Trilogy, and let me know what questions you have in the comments. If you loved this article, subscribe to the blog to get more.Donate by buying a book.

Which part of Trailokya would you like to explore the history? Is it the mythology and theism? The locations? Or where the books originated from with me? I’m sure you have a lot of questions regardless of which topic you fancy the most. Let’s spend a little time exploring each of them. If there’s something that I miss, you can ask in the comments, and, depending on the complexity, I’ll either answer there or write up a follow up article.

Mythology and Theism

As the title of the books suggest, many of the precepts contained therein are gleaned from Buddhism and Hinduism, but takes the main tenet of Sikhism as it’s guiding principle: the rejection of any one religious tradition as the absolute truth, and also that secular life is tandem with the spiritual. If you want to learn more about these faiths, you should definitely look them up on google and find some books to answer questions you might have. I’m certainly no expert or guru, though I strive toward enlightenment.

Greco-Roman mythology also permeates the pages. You can see this on the maps and place names, but also in the orders of the duta. In fact, you’ll see a tableau of many ancient faiths represented. Perhaps you can think of a few, such as the twins Maiel and Joel, who gave rise to the gods Diana and Apollo, or General Horus and his troops harkening ancient Egypt.

The purpose of this is to refer back to the Sikh tenet that binds it all together. In the world of Trailokya, the incarnated peoples of Samsara created mythologies to explain what was unexplainable to them at the time. Multiple human cultures, for instance, boast angelic creatures in their lore. Either the world was far more connected in ancient history than we realize (which I believe is the case anyway), or there is a shared experience among humanity.

The Abrahamic traditions also show up in this way, while also taking the stage with specific characters who take part in them. It is unavoidable to mention the christian church, as it has set itself front and center at the heart of most stories dealing with demonic entities. To ignore this, while covering such subjects would be to ignore the culture in which it is set. It would really feel half-assed, in my opinion. You don’t have to like any religion to see how they play into the subject matter, and that someone might seek out persons in the field for answers if they were encountering what they believed to be demonic.

Locations

The first book takes us out of Zion to Earth in the early 1960s. Readers travel across europe after the close of the Hungarian Revolution (1956). Scars of the destruction caused still mark the country. England and France are on the cusp of the volatile changes coming later in the decade.

The second book takes us to the United States and New York, several decades later.

In the end, where will this lead readers? Sorry, I can’t give that away yet.

I can talk about how the mythologies above are intertwined with location, such as the Order of Horus and it’s very Egyptian like appearance. The locations often create a mini trinity: the true presentation in Zion, the physical reflection in Samsara, and the idea of the true presentation (or memory/broken memory). This creates a deeply rich tapestry, with so many intertexts (Easter Eggs) for readers.

I have to admit, the circles of interconnectedness in the universe have always fascinated me. Picking up on them feels like a CPU upgrade, a better processor. Once you start seeing connections, they become increasingly obvious, and new meaning can always be found, even in the connections long since perceived.

The Book Series’ Origins

This subject has been visited in other articles posted on the blog, so it will be summarized here. Essentially, the story written came out of years of strange dreams, and research into history and mythology. I’m sure the research fed the dreams, which was quite lucky for me. That meant that I could seed dreams, or feed my head and eventually interesting things would form. I can’t say that it wasn’t disturbing from time to time. Think about what I was seeing in the majority of these mirages.

However, the dreams started in early childhood. Recollection of what could have possibly triggered the start has been difficult. Timing would need to be known, and that is almost completely impossible. The dark figure of Morgentus could certainly have been inspired by vampires, of which I was deeply afraid at the time. My image of a supreme being was likely inspired by Gandalf, as my mother read the books while pregnant for me, and I had the Rankin-Bass poster in my nursery. A preoccupation with mythology has been with me for as long as I can remember. I rather enjoyed learning as much as I could about the pantheon. When I was old enough, the book of Revelations and some other passages of the bible fascinated me. Of course, that meant I watched the movies made during the 1950s and 1960s. The Robe still bores me today. The joke is it’s the cure for insomnia, right up there with The Name of the Rose.

When a reader asks what goes into creating such a work, I can say, with the backing of all of my studies: everything that writer has in their head, and then some. Hopefully this has answered some of your questions and created even more curiosity about the details of The Trailokya Series.

Click here to learn more about The Trailokya Trilogy, and let me know what questions you have in the comments. If you loved this article, subscribe to the blog to get more.Donate by buying a book.